Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Mike Lissner @michaeljaylissner.com · 20h

We're launching a semantic search API with an open model, and we're making it possible to search by vector so you don't have to send us your queries at all. Hugely more private this way! We should probably patent this one... github.com/freelawproje...

feat(search): Allows search endpoint to accept pre-computed embeddings by ERosendo · Pull Request #6352 · freelawproject/courtlistener

Fixes This PR fixes #5251 Summary This PR enhances the semantic search API by adding support for sending pre-computed embeddings. It also updates supporting utilities and tests to ensure predic...

github.com

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The Oaklandside @oaklandside.org · 20h

The measure follows a 500% spike in calls to ACILEP, a county hotline. It will expand the hotline hours and fund more legal aid for immigrants.

Alameda County approves $3.6 million to scale up immigrant defense amid ICE surge

The measure follows a 500% spike in calls to ACILEP, a county hotline. It will expand the hotline hours and fund more legal aid for immigrants.

oaklandside.org

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d

We were actually getting somewhere, too. 😞

@sbmitche.bsky.social
www.library.hbs.edu/working-know...

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Luc van Donkersgoed @lucvandonkersgoed.com · 1d

I swear the things AWS manages to squeeze out of their data centers should be classified as black magic. You can now create instant copies of EBS volumes with single-digit millisecond latency. Sounds simple - but this is an amazing feat of engineering.

aws-news.com/article/2025...

Introducing Amazon EBS Volume Clones: Create instant copies of your EBS volumes

Amazon EBS Volume Clones allows users to create instant point-in-time copies of encrypted volumes within the same Availability Zone with a single API call ...

aws-news.com

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 1d

Unless and until some kind of compelling legal and moral argument is presented as to why this is a legitimate use of deadly force, this is just…mass murder.

Amarnath Amarasingam @amaramarasingam.bsky.social · 1d

The military has now killed 27 people as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/u...

U.S. Military Kills Another 6 People in 5th Caribbean Strike, Trump Says

www.nytimes.com

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Brad Heath @bradheath.bsky.social · 1d

The Assad government carried out a two-year clandestine operation to truck thousands of bodies from one of Syria’s largest known mass graves to a secret location more than an hour away in the remote desert, a Reuters investigation has found.

www.reuters.com/world/middle...

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Pires @pires.dev · 2d

YES! 🤩 blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/p...

Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse | The Mozilla Blog

Every part of your life has its own rhythm: work, school, family, personal projects. Beginning Oct. 14, we’re rolling out profile management in Firefox s

blog.mozilla.org

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Zac Estrada @zacestrada.com · 2d

"'The JPL that we knew is gone,' said one employee, who has worked at JPL for over 10 years and lamented the repeated layoffs. The engineer also described an ongoing brain drain and a feeling of despondency among the staff" laist.com/news/climate...

JPL announces that hundreds of employees will be laid off Tuesday

Jet Propulsion Laboratory leadership announces that 11% of the workforce is being cut.

laist.com

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Matthew Green @matthewdgreen.bsky.social · 2d

This is amazing research by Nadia Heninger and her co-authors Wenyi Morty Zhang, Annie Dai, Keegan Ryan, Dave Levin and Aaron Schulman. TL;DR a huge number of satellite links over our heads are totally unencrypted. satcom.sysnet.ucsd.edu

🛰️ SATCOM Security

Research project homepage for SATCOM Security: papers, source code, and recent satellite communications vulnerabilities.

satcom.sysnet.ucsd.edu

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Julie DiCaro @juliedicaro.bsky.social · 3d

So Kilmer Abrego-Garcia will not challenge a deportation to Costa Rica, who has agreed to for him residency, but DHS won’t agree to send him there because it’s not cruel enough.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

For weeks, Mr. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who is married to a U.S. citizen, has made clear that he would not challenge his deportation if he were sent to Costa Rica, which has promised him legal residency and guaranteed that he would not be sent back to El Salvador.

But the Trump administration has refused to deport him to Costa Rica, and in an earlier hearing this week, Judge Xinis pressed the administration to consider the option or clarify why it was unacceptable.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 2d

Wow, wow, wow. This has always been legally possible but the law has virtually never been enforced — and now this is the SECOND case I've heard of in the last month (first involving a person with a green card) of a noncitizen being charged for failure to carry their papers.

Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 2d

NEWS: ICE gave a Rogers Park man a $130 ticket for not having his papers on him. They rounded him up last week and eventually let him go, but not without a fine that some critics say is un-American. Trump admin enforcing little-used law
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/13/i...

ICE tickets Chicago man with legal residency $130 for not having his papers on him: ‘It’s not fair…I’m a resident’

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fined Rueben Antonio Cruz $130 for not having his papers with him.

www.chicagotribune.com

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Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 4d

After spending 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, evidence hidden by the prosecution reversed his conviction. Rather than finally enjoying freedom, ICE abducted him for deportation

Depraved.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him

Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

www.miamiherald.com

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Mike Lissner @michaeljaylissner.com · 3d

In case you're worried about our democracy, the top case on CourtListener this year is about a Hollywood celebrity, not, you know, *gestures broadly*. Number two is Abrego Garcia. It's not even close.

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Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 3d

I know this makes me impossibly out of touch for an American, but I’m amazed that we live in a country where you can write this sentence. I did not grow up in a place where children had any access whatsoever to guns. It was not in our culture at all. I didn’t even know of an *adult* with a gun.

The study suggests that adapting firearm safety guidance to different childhood developmental stages could be crucial to saving lives.

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Mike Lissner @michaeljaylissner.com · 3d

And yet XML, not so much.

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Mike Lissner @michaeljaylissner.com · 3d

Interesting, thanks.

Mike Lissner @michaeljaylissner.com · 3d

Just touched my toes for the first time in my life. It’s been a journey. Please clap.

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Mike Lissner @michaeljaylissner.com · 3d

This article is great! Any idea why concurrent index operations aren’t the default? They seem like such a better trade off, but we’ve been bit by non-concurrent ones a bunch of times, so maybe I’m biased.

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kottke.org @kottke.org · Sep 3

Thetrusize.com, by James Talmage and Damon Maneice, is a website that lets you move a country or state around a Mercator projection map of the world so you can see how big or small a country really is.

[thetruesize.com]

Compare Countries With This Simple Tool

Drag and drop countries around the map to compare their relative size. Is Greenland really as big as all of Africa? You may be surprised at what you find! A great tool for educators.

thetruesize.com

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Bill Gates @billgates.bsky.social · 3d

U.S. funding for global health saves an estimated 3.3 million lives each year. From HIV treatment to malaria prevention, the impact is real and measurable: b-gat.es/3KP8yd6

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 4d

“One of them, Albert ‘Skip’ Caissie Jr., 78, said in a phone interview that he wasn’t aware that he was involved in a Supreme Court case.”

Who Are the Louisiana Voters Behind a Major Supreme Court Challenge?

www.nytimes.com

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Emily Galvin-Almanza @galvinalmanza.bsky.social · 4d

Seriously, Judges *do no do things like this*

They don't give their opinion to the media

They don't criticize how SCOTUS works

This is them breaking the emergency glass, folks
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders

www.nytimes.com

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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 5d

A library director in Wyoming who was fired two years ago because she refused to remove books with sexual content and LGBTQ themes from a library's children and young adult sections has just been awarded $700,000 in a settlement. t.co/EA5L1kOZfV

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/us/wyoming-library-settlement-book-bans-terri-lesley.html?smtyp=cur&smid=fb-nytimes&fbclid=IwdGRjcANWLXdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHhlnY6nKj_j4zuP3VjNSstXWBaV1t8-sPQ5C3b_jS6WN...

t.co

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Murshed Zaheed @murshedz.bsky.social · 5d

“More than three dozen federal judges have told The New York Times that the Supreme Court’s flurry of brief, opaque emergency orders in cases related to the Trump administration have left them confused about how to proceed in those matters and are hurting the judiciary’s image with the public.”

Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders

www.nytimes.com

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Mike Lissner @michaeljaylissner.com · 5d

Any zoho users out there that want to do a referral and save some money? We're about to sign up, I think.